To get angry about crass commercialism when it comes to Star Wars is foolish – it’s always been about crass commercialism. George Lucas’ stroke of genius wasn’t the script or direction of that first movie, it was securing the licensing rights from Fox. From day one Star Wars has been all about moving product.
But lately it feels like Star Wars is now about nothing but moving product. The latest example: a new Adidas ad that puts people like Snoop Dogg and David Beckham into the Mos Eisley cantina as a way of selling sneakers and promote the World Cup. It’s kind of gross on every possible level; I’d sort of be okay with it if Snoop Dogg was digitally inserted into the scene as a celebration of Star Wars itself, but this is just a commercial. And I don’t even know what the connection that the Cantina really has to the World Cup or to Adidas. It just feels like a chance to shoe horn a bunch of people into a really familiar setting.
We’ve come to just roll over and accept the best of our culture being prostituted out for commercials – I remember back when it was a travesty to have a cool rock song in a commercial and today it’s a valid marketing tool for up and coming bands – but where does it stop? I feel like everybody kind of stood up and said ‘Fuck you’ when that vacuum commercial resurrected Fred Astaire for some crass bullshit, and I kind of wish we’d do the same here.
Oh, and the ‘Originality’ tag on this commercial… has irony truly up and died?